Locking a period and closing the yearقفل الفترة وإقفال السنة

Two different things get confused constantly, so start here: locking stops people changing the past, and closing rolls the year up and starts a new one. Locking is reversible and you will do it every month. Closing is the big one and you will do it once a year.

Do them in that order. A locked period is what makes a closing trustworthy.

1. The two lock dates, and why there are two

The two screens look identical and they are not the same setting. One governs accounting entries, the other governs stock movements. In the pictures they hold different dates, which is the whole reason both exist: a company can close its books for a month while stock is still being counted, or the other way round.

Each has two fields and they do different jobs:

• Lock date limit is the boundary the company has set - how far back anyone is allowed to lock.
• Lock transactions till date is what you are setting now. Everything on or before it becomes read-only.

The lock date is the first thing to check when Libra refuses to save something. A document that will not save with a date in a closed month is not a fault - it is this screen doing its job. The message rarely says so.

Both are read-only until you press Edit, which is why Save and Cancel are greyed above.

2. End of Year Closing - and the order it enforces

This is the screen that ends your financial year, and the most useful thing about it is not in any of the labels: most of it is greyed out, and that is the instruction.

Look at the picture. In Initial closing steps only the first two are available - Closing accounts setup and Repost yearly transactions. Everything under them, and the whole Closing accounts and balance sheet panel below, is switched off. They light up as the steps before them are completed. The screen will not let you produce a balance sheet before the accounts that feed it have been set up and reposted.

So read it top to bottom as a checklist, not as a menu:

1. Closing accounts setup - say which accounts close into which.
2. Repost yearly transactions - bring the year's entries up to date.
3. Fixed asset depreciation and Closing fixed assets - each with a Manual option beside it, for when you would rather post the figures yourself than let Libra calculate them.
4. Difference of exchange accounts - settle the currency differences.
5. Then the second panel: Income statement, Close expenses and revenues, Balance sheet, Transfer ending balances - the last of which is what carries your balances into next year.

The right-hand panel, Cost center selection, decides how the income statement and balance sheet are broken down - all projects, departments and processes, or a chosen plan. Leave it on all unless your accountant wants a cost-centre view.

Take a backup before you press Issue, and press it once. The closing writes vouchers across the whole year. There is a reverse (section 3), but a backup taken five minutes earlier is a much shorter conversation than a reversal.

3. Reverse Closing - the way back, and what it asks

There are two reverse entries in the menu: Reverse closing of current year for the accounting closing, and Reverse inventory closing for the stock closing. The accounting one opens its own screen first - Ok, Close, and five options: Transfer Balances, Expenses And Revenues, Difference Of Exchange, Close Fixed Assets and Depreciations. In a company with nothing to reverse, all five are greyed, and this prompt follows:

Read that message carefully, because it is easy to misread as harmless. It is not telling you the reverse is unnecessary; it is telling you it found nothing from a previous closing and is asking whether to proceed anyway. No is the right answer unless you know exactly why you are here.

Three things the screen does not say:

• A company's first closing raises this same prompt, even though the closing is real: the screen looks for the opening voucher of the year before the one closed, and a first year has none. Reversing it then goes through a support password - ask your support provider.
• When the options are available, a ticked box means undo.
• Only the latest closing can be reversed; an older year means reversing the newer ones first.

Closing the year, reopening it, and closing it again walks through a full cycle on a live company.

Reverse inventory closing can appear greyed out in the menu, as Inventory closing can in the End of year closing group. A greyed entry does not open.

That the reverse exists at all is the reassuring part: a closing is not a one-way door. But use it deliberately - reverse, fix what was wrong, close again - rather than as a way of exploring what the buttons do.

4. Inventory closing - one choice, then Issue

Where Inventory closing is available in the End of year closing group, it opens a small window of its own:

• Issue and Close in its ribbon;
• one choice below them, Average cost or FIFO.

Average cost is selected when the window opens. Close leaves without doing anything, and Issue is the button that carries the closing out, so settle the method before you press it.